Julio Da Rosa, owner and director of the CV 149 Radio del Centro radio station – the only media outlet for miles around – did nothing more than read the list on air. He paid for that with his life. A furious Colombo called on the phone and demanded an urgent interview with Da Rosa to seek a rebuttal. The meeting was scheduled for Thursday, February 24.

At 11:15 a.m. that day, in the lonely radio station located in the town’s former railroad depot, Da Rosa, 36, came out of the men’s room and, apparently without a word being uttered, was shot in the heart, silencing for good a voice that after five years on the air was well known in Baltasar Brum and surrounding areas.

Colombo then shot his own brains out. He had cocked for the last time the 38 caliber Martin revolver that he had kept since his days as a police officer when, ironically, he had been admonished for not brandishing it when he should have.

"It was all over in three minutes"

Two spent shells – the cause of a commotion that suddenly disturbed the rural peace of a place where people would greet one another respectfully – lay there on the floor of the radio station, the door half ajar, alongside two bodies. An unexpected, even inexplicable, horror despite the fact the case is now closed.

A witness, but not to the crime itself, radio station employee Alexis de los Santos, 22 (secretary, producer and announcer), said "Colombo appeared. Julio was in the men’s room. I told him. In three minutes, five at the most, it was all over. I don’t think they could even have talked to each other."

Colombo, the father of two married children who leave outside the town, hosted his own radio program, a weekly, half-hour one that was targeted at the members of the Colorado Party, which he supported. In Uruguay, especially outside the capital of Montevideo, the polarization between this party and the Blanco Party (also called the National Party) is almost total, even though current Uruguayan President Jorge Batlle, member of a Colorado Party dynasty that dates back to 1868, won in a runoff over the leftist Frente Amplio coalition thanks to support from the Blancos..

"Politics and soccer are big on the radio, but in a small town can be risky," says José Luis Da Rosa, the eldest of Julio’s three brothers who, after working with him at the outset, moved to Maldonado, near Punta del Este. Now, after being away for six months, he has gone back to Baltasar Brum and is trying to reopen the radio station, shut down since the murder.

Da Rosa’s widow, Euda Fernández, for a while went to Bella Unión, the biggest nearby city, with a population of 16,000, with their four children – César, 17; Sonia, 15; Diego, 11, and Laura, 9.

Threats prior to the murder

Bella Unión is some 44 miles from Baltasar Brum. Half of the distance is covered by dirt roads where cows graze unfenced, trucks throw up clouds of dust in dry times and rains turn the roads into a quagmire. It is such a small township that it has only one doctor, Carlos Echenique, who once hosted a radio program on preventive medicine called "Salud para todos" (Health for Everyone).

Julio’s brother José Luis says his sister-in-law, Euda, is scared, that she received a telephoned threat before her husband died. "It was a female voice," she recalls. And a couple of days after the funeral she had received offers to purchase the AM radio station.

"It is off the air for the time being because of my brother’s death," Da Rosa explains, a lump in his throat. "We don’t want what the spirit with which Julio founded it to be spoiled. It will keep its community role, in which people could go the studio and speak out unhampered. That is important in a small town, especially to spread the local news such as about illnesses or burial services."

That is precisely the value of the radio and, behind it the man who, after graduating in electronics and worked as a reporter for Channel 10 TV in Bella Unión, decided to start his own broadcast station from scratch in a disused railroad depot where, everybody said, his doors were always open to anyone with something to say.

The closure of the rail line in 1988 further isolated northern Uruguay. Baltasar Brum did not escape the economic recession – and with it a lowered tax base and higher unemployment – brought about by the currency devaluation in neighboring Brazil.

Two well-known people

In the 1950s, Colombo was a waiter in a bar in his hometown of Artigas. That is where he met Hugo Alves, owner of a hardware store located across the street from the radio and host of a tango program that was suspended for lack of advertising, and Elio Silveira, the local interim city clerk.

"He was determined to commit suicide because of his financial difficulties," said his nephew, Juan Carlos Martinicorena, city councilman and a member, as his uncle had once been, of the local Rural Development Association. Colombo had served as its manager for a number of years.

So many goings on in the same place make it difficult to conceive reality as it is, or was. That happens to everyone, in particular to Hugo Dissimoz, one of the people that helped put the radio on the air. He is a journalist who divides his time between a Sunday program, "Vibraciones del pueblo" (Community Heartbeat), from which he wages successful campaigns (a little girl was sent to Madrid for an operation), the La Estrella bakery he owns and the Lions Club.

"The radio has been a hobby for me since 1986," he says. "I never charge a cent for this. Julio and I got along very well together. I had more experience than he had and that is why I helped him. It is unthinkable that two people I knew, he and Colombo, should end up like that. I was beaten up once, in 1990, for comments I had made about a soccer game – another controversial issue in this town – but I believe that in this case anyone might have been shot."

The case is practically closed. Martinicorena doubts it. "Colombia had a bruise to the right eye and when they handed over his belongings to us after the autopsy at the Bella Unión morgue, I noticed that the frame and lenses of his spectacles were broken. That is where the bullet entered, but the marks bore no relationship to the shot. I also heard in the corridor that he had four broken ribs."

"He was merely a mailman"

It would be useless to try and confirm this at the police precinct, more yet to take the word of a stranger who offers his own information. The theory, nevertheless, could open up the possibility that Colombo and Da Rosa had a fight prior to the shooting. But this in fact would not solve anything. It would fill up the three to five minutes between the time the two met and the outcome.

It is clear, in principle, that Colombo’s anger was due to his debts – "hidden from the family, as he kept himself to himself," confessed Martinicorena, a supporter of the Blanco Party surrounded by Colorado supporters. His frustration at not being able to serve again at city clerk could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, as De los Santos observed.

Colombo’s perplexed family circulated an open letter to the community attempting to justify his attitude or, at least, ease the pain at what had occurred. "We know full well that in his desire to get ahead he made human, administrative and political errors, but of this we are certain – there was no malicious intent."

This is in the paragraph that refers to his brief, 10 months’ service as city clerk. Only Silveira, the senior municipal employee who now serves in that role, is prepared to speak about excessive expenses as the reason for Colombo’s admonishment, an internal matter. He adds, "People are staggered by the amount of money that comes in. In a rural community, it is the land owners who provide it, but it does not all stay here."

Others prefer to leave out the details. They waver between feeling that Colombo rankled at being under the thumb of the mayor of Artigas and being upset by the newspaper editorial and its being read on the radio. Da Rosa, the victim, was merely the mailman, as absurdly happens no often.

An isolated incident

"the role of city clerk is something like becoming the father of all needs," Dissimoz says. "The city council is the people’s house. To it go the needy, those who have nothing to eat or need a truck to move house. It has its share of power, certainly. It is a political key."

Behind him in his office a sign declares, "If anyone speaks ill of me to you, ask him how much he owes me." The same words, as a sort of town slogan, hang from a column at Alves’ place of business. "Julio supported the Blanco Party, but he was neutral in politics," he says. "What happened was incredible. No one could imagine it. I was here, opposite he radio station, and they called me on the phone to ask me what had happened. I crossed the street and saw the two bodies, one beside the other."

A neighbor of his, Domingo Salsamendi, 80, one of the few natives of the town, shakes his head. "These tragedies hit the small communities harder than the big ones," he declares. "Colombo is gone. In Salto, where I have relatives, they asked me what color was Julio’s hair – alluding to his political leanings."

They call Artigas province, on the Uruguay-Brazil border, the turf of the Colorado Party, its bulwark. Da Rosa was for the Blancos, but that did not mean his political views had sealed his fate – though, it is said, a group of people close to Colombo had begun meeting more frequently shortly before the crime.

The city council is a problem in itself. Already in 1987 the then city clerk was in trouble, during a public inquiry held in a soccer club meeting room into allegations of irregularities, such as overpayments and using child labor, among other things.

It is said of Colombo that in the wage packets of people working for them there would be no money, just IOUs to his supermarket, the biggest in the area – a sure way of collecting on debts, if you will. "The people have not really realized just what happened in Baltasar Brum," Dissimoz says. "It had more impact elsewhere than here. For example, I have not seen any outcry about this kind of crime, such as occurred in Argentina over the murder of Cabezas."

The upset continues, but unlike in the case of the brutal murder of the news photographer, Da Rosa and his murderer, Colombo, themselves, it being a personal matter, ruled out any possibility of it being anything but an isolated incident, a rare event in Uruguay, as was stated at the time by the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), National Association of Broadcasters of Uruguay (ANDEBU), Uruguayan Press Association , Social Communication Workers Union (APU-STCS), Inland Broadcasting Association (RAMI), Inland Press Association (OPI) and International Broadcasting Association (IBA/AIR).

A rare event that has been definitely solved, except for the possible discussion they may have had before their anger rose. A fatal burst of rage that snuffed out two lives and left widows and orphans and which brought about the silence where the radio had been. A small town, big silence.